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94 Repositioning of Barcelona’s Image in the Light of a Redefinition of the Urban Tourism Planning Model
cina Pla Estratègic Turisme Barcelona 2015,
2010). Second, the setting up of various strategic
business groups set up by the Barcelona Tourist
Board such as the health, sports, and university
clusters, among others.
––
We analysed eighty two items from eleven
European tourist cities to create The Tourism
Innovation Capacity of Barcelona Index, 2008
(Anex). The items chosen were based on the
following four fields:
––
Territorial limits (surface area); demography
(population and density) economic (unemployment
rate); GDP per capita; % service sector
and GDP; economy’s growth rate). Transport
connections by air, train, bus and underground,
stressing journey times and intermodal
transport. In the case of air transport,
the following were taken into account: number
of domestic and international flights; annual
passenger traffic; number of airports; cities
linked by air. In the case of railways: the
number of high-speed rail stops; cities within
one hour’s travelling distance. In the cases of
bus and underground services: the number of
kilometres of lines and service frequency.
––
Tourism competitiveness; number and origin
of tourists; ratio of tourists to residents;
occupation rates; attractions linked to culture
and monuments; number of visitors to main
monuments; the structure of accommodation
and cultural offerings.
––
Components of excellence for a creative city;
training; universities and leading business
schools; number of doctorates; scientific
production in terms of journal articles and
patents; percentage of population engaged in
R&D; international presence; level of research
and inhabitants’ use of technology.
We have taken these four index groups
– basics, connectivity, tourism and creative
society – to obtain a more clear positioning of
European cities, taking into account the competitive
vision of the city as per projected in this
paper. We consider that indicator packets such
as the World Economic Forum, WEF 2011, and
the World Travel and Tourism Council, WTTC
2001, are extremely valuable for countries from
the tourist perspective. However, the peculiarity
of European cities and their current competitive
environment forces us to present this
indicator model that integrates elements related
to infrastructure, connectivity aspects, strictly
tourist aspects and the idea of creative society.
Secondary sources were used which were categorized
from 1 to 5 (1, lowest; 5, highest). In
order to obtain the synthetic index, a compendium
of all, it is presented weighted on a scale
of 1-10 (1, least relevant, 10, most important),
and through this weighting the relative values​
of each indicator have been calculated for each
city. The sum of the relative values, arranged
Figure 1: Barcelona 1990-2010
1990 2010
Tourists 1,700,000 7,100,000
Overnight stays 3,700,000 14,000,000
Holiday 22.7 % 50.1
Business and other 77.3 % 49.9 %
Passengers, El Prat airport 9,048,600 29,209,500
Cruise passengers 115,100 2,350,200
Hotel rooms 10,200 35,800
Tourist attractions (1.3 m tourists a
year and upwards)
Sagrada Familia (2.3 m); Cosmo-
Caixa [Science Museum] (2.1 m);
Aquarium (1.6 m); CaixaForum [Art
& Cultural Centre] (1.5 m); Picasso
Museum (1.3 m); Barcelona F.C.
Museum (1.3 m)
Tourist Bus [‘Bus Turístic’] users 23,700 1,925,200
BCN Card users 10,200 130,700
BCN Walking Tour users 1,500 15,200
Source: data taken from Turisme Barcelona, 2011
PASOS. Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural, 11(1). 2013 ISSN 1695-7121